It’s time once again for my fifth annual Holiday Reads blog post. This is my attempt to spread holiday cheer by recommending heartwarming books with happy endings. Who wants to read anything depressing in December? It’s Christmastime! So here we go. The Gift of a Charm by Melissa Hill Irish author Hill creates a romantic,…
I think I have a new favorite mystery heroine: Tannie Maria, from Recipes for Love and Murder. (“Tannie” is the polite way to address a woman older than you in South Africa, kind of like calling someone “auntie”). She is naïve but intelligent, vulnerable yet strong, and one of the best fictional cooks around! And…
Happy Black Friday! Thanksgiving is officially over, and the winter holiday season is upon us. So many people spend today shopping for their loved ones as an initiation of the holiday season. Today is a day where the value of material goods gets tangled up in our love for others as we determine the best…
Boulevard Monmartre, Paris by Camille Pissarro Alice Hoffman digs up a little piece of history and imagines an amazing love story about the parents of Jacobo Camille Pissarro, one of the greatest painters of all time. Pissarro, who is regarded as one of the fathers of the impressionism and Camille Pissarro post-impressionism movement, was born…
Type-A Ana can’t wait to lead her quiz bowl team to victory. Ana’s a rule follower, everything must be precise and by the book. Zak enjoys goofing off and role-playing games. When Zak’s shenanigans land him on the quiz bowl team as penance, Ana is livid. The quiz bowl semifinals force Zak to miss his…
The final movie in the Hunger Games saga - Mockingjay Part 2 opens in theaters next week. The Hunger Games is a bestselling book series with blockbuster movies to match. If you’ve read all the books and seen the movies and still need something to cure your craving try one of these similar books: Proxy…
Some books resonate with us long after we’ve finished reading them. M. T. Anderson’s Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad is one such book for me. In 1989 I visited Leningrad and that trip still haunts me. It haunts me because the first thing I remember seeing…
Welcome to November! I don’t know about you, but this time of year I start thinking (and planning) for all the holiday food to come and all the things still on my to-do list. I love dreaming of fun food and fun books. Books with depth just don’t hold much appeal for me this time of year. I have…
Isabel Allende is one of the best and most beloved literary authors of our time, and if you’ve never read her, The Japanese Lover would be a great place to start. In this lovely, lyrical book, Alma Belasco comes to the United States as a young child in 1939, bewildered and sad from having had…
Sorcerers, witches, politics, and prejudice in Regency England: it’s all here in this rollicking fantasy. (Take one look at that cover and you know this book is going to be cool.) Zacharias Wythe, who is of African descent, becomes Sorcerer to the Crown, attaining the highest position in England’s Society of Unnatural Philosophers. Wythe has a big…
